CherryOS Goes Open Source

Following pressure and allegations from the open source developer community that it had stolen code from a similar product, Hawaii-based software developer Maui-X Stream has announced it will release its Cherry OS Mac OS X emulator for Windows next month as free, open source software.

In a short note on its Web site, the company confirmed rumors by saying "Due to Overwhelming Demand Cherry Open Source Project Launches 5.1.2005." The company provided no further explanation for the decision and provided no additional links.

Company president Jim Kartes has not returned repeated phone calls and e-mail from The Mac Observer requesting additional comment on the companyis decision.

The project has been under major scrutiny as of late, accused by other developers of the open source Mac emulator PearPC of using its software code to produce CherryOS -- what has up until now been a planned commercial product.

"That is simply not true," he said. "They know not what they speak. This is an entirely different architecture and code from PearPC. Thatis why weire able to achieve such higher speeds than they have. These are simply a bunch of lies."

Mr. Kartes said his developers "never ever" copied code from PearPC and just because they introduced their code months before Maui-X Stream did "doesnit give them a claim on certain technical aspects of our product."

But despite denials, accusations have been rampant. Programmers report that code in CherryOS is identical to PearPC when compared side-by-side and that PearPC graphics were found "embedded inside the CherryOS executable" code.

Maui-X Stream grabbed headlines last year when it announced it was developing CherryOS and would join Virtual PC as only the second commercial available Mac emulator for Windows. In March, the company released version 1.0 of the product featuring support for CD/DVD, CPU, memory allocation, USB, FireWire, PCI, PCMCIA bus and Ethernet. It automatically detects hardware and network connections and allows for the use of virtually any OS X-ready application.